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Proposed Boulder County oil, gas rules may get commissioners' action this week

By John Fryar Longmont Times-Call

Posted:
12/08/2012 07:58:46 PM MST

Updated:
12/08/2012 07:59:46 PM MST

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What: Boulder County commissioners resume consideration of proposed revisions, updates and additions to the county Land Use Code's rules and regulations about oil and gas exploration and production in unincorporated parts of the county.

BOULDER -- On Thursday afternoon, the Board of County Commissioners will try to put finishing touches on new rules that would replace a 19-year-old set of Land Use Code provisions about drilling for oil and gas in unincorporated parts of Boulder County.

Many of the more than 30 people testifying at a commissioners' hearing on those draft regulations last week argued that the proposed rules don't go far enough to protect the public's health and safety. Many of those speakers renewed calls for Boulder County to prohibit oil and gas development on properties outside the boundaries of the counties' cities and towns, if that drilling would entail hydraulic fracturing, the process of injecting a mixture of sand, water and chemicals to free up deep-underground oil and gas deposits.

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Boulder County commissioners have maintained, however, that under current state laws and Colorado courts' rulings based on those laws, a locally imposed ban on "fracking" likely would be overturned.

The commissioners have promised to lobby for changing state and federal laws and regulations to give local governments more land-use authority to legally control drilling within their jurisdictions. Pending such possible changes, Boulder County officials have said the county's 1993-vintage Land Use Code provisions about oil and gas development are inadequate and need to be updated as much as may be possible within the limits of current state and federal laws.

But while anti-fracking activists have criticized the county for planning to allow resumed drilling under the new rules, the draft regulations also have come under fire from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission -- the state agency that oversees oil and gas development -- as well as at least two major oil and gas companies, Encana Oil and Gas USA Inc. and Noble Energy Inc.

Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission director Matt Lepore has written county officials that "we remain concerned that certain provisions of the draft regulations could be applied in a manner that would result in operational conflicts with existing COGCC regulations."

Lepore said, for example, that the state agency has a process in place for assessing applicants' proposed well sizes and locations, "given the surrounding land uses, environmental features and wildlife considerations," a process he wrote "is one of the COGCC's primary tools for ensuring the state's oil and gas resources are developed safely and in an environmentally responsible manner."

LePore said in his Dec. 4 letter that the state agency is concerned about the possibility that Boulder County would deny an oil and gas applicant's development plan for drilling at a specific location, location for which the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has already approved a permit after considering the relevant state environmental and safety standards.

Noble Energy land director P. David Padgett wrote the county commissioners last week that though the county staff has proposed eliminating some redundancies between the proposed county regulations "and parallel state regulations," Noble "has identified numerous areas where duplicative but disparate regulations continue to overlap and conflict."

Key among those, Padgett wrote, are Boulder County's proposals for groundwater sampling near wells at a time when the state agency is in the process of revising its own water sampling rules.

"Likewise, there is significant overlap and discord between Boulder County's chemical inventory and emergency response regulations and those already adopted by the state," Padgett said.

Darrin Henke, Encana's vice president for that company's South Rockies Business Unit, raised a series of concerns about the proposed county rules in his own Dec. 4 letter. He asked commissioners to "forgo this independent regulatory process and defer to existing sate and federal regulation as to oil and gas."

Henke wrote that the proposed regulations "may prevent Encana from accessing and/or developing its minerals in Boulder County."

Said Henke: "The state of Colorado has some of the strongest, most progressive, and transparent rules and regulations governing oil and gas operations in the United States. Responsible development requires uniform regulations. A patchwork of local regulations ... will inhibit and impede the orderly development of Colorado's oil and gas resources."

Boulder County commissioners and their staff have been working under a timetable that contemplates a vote on the new oil and gas rules this week, and their formal adoption by the end of December. A year-long moratorium on accepting and processing new drilling applications expires on Feb. 4. However, commissioners have tentatively scheduled a Jan. 24 meeting to decide whether that moratorium should be extended, if need be, to give the county time to gear up for implementing and enforcing the new regulations.

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